Meta

Writing for our friends UCA News in Asia, Maryknoll Father William Grimm writes about the future of Catholic journalism. In an editorial titled “Don’t stop the presses — yet,” Father Grimm writes that the electronic age is upon us, and “every editor’s desk should have on it a picture of a tombstone with the name of his or her publication on it.”

“The demise of the Catholic press is inevitable,” he writes, “but, at least in Asia, it may still be a bit early to make funeral arrangements.”

However, he notes, “the role of Catholic journalism shall remain, even though the mode of delivery will change.” Read the full column here.

Journalism’s future? Paid for by whom?
I’m open to considering how great blogs can become, or are, but somebody’s got to pay the freight.
If a blogger is working for a news organization that has a print or broadcast product, those revenue streams are making his or her blogging possible. If a person is blogging from his basement, another full-time job has to pay for that.
So where is the money for the future of journalism going to come from? I don’t know. I’ve read how there may be some non-profit foundation to support blogging journalism. At best, that will have a very limited supply of funds distributed to too numerous and diverse a pool of bloggers.
Ads on blogs? Not enough to pay a mortgage.
Hate to be the skeptic, but without a revenue model (in newspapers and broadcast it’s ads + sales = content) blogs are not the future of journalism. Or, blogs may be a future, not the kind of journalism we expect or like.

Example: Person working in pr, corp communications, shoe sales, McDonalds or wherever, comes home after a long day and puts out a blog based on reports he’s read somewhere else, plus a few conversations to provide anecdotes. Maybe he or she talks to some local people on a local topic and follows that topic, and maybe he or she can remain objective. Then kids come along and the blog gets a posting once a week, maybe every two weeks. It comes down to opinion or personality, because that’s all the content one has.

This may be the future, but we may not like it.
And if newspapers start restricting their content online (they’ll have to) there will be even less content available.
In other words, if you like to get your news from talk radio, you’re going to love blogs.